Over the back of the driver’s seat, I held out fifty bucks American to him, which instantly turned on the money light in his eyes. “I don’t have one, Remy. Comprendes?”

“Sí, señor,” Remy said, snatching the fifty bucks from my fingers. “A ghost. A puff of smoke. Sure. I can dig that. Sí.”

“There’s more, Remy,” I said. “And it involves very little of your time and hopefully no trouble, sí?”

“Sí, señor,” Remy said. “Okay. I am down for that, yes. Whatever.”

“I need a gun,” I said. “No street-thug piece of shit. Nothing with a history. Nothing with much of a future. Can you handle that, or should I find another driver?”

“No problem,” Remy said. “Something clean. Acid-burned serial number. Semi-auto nine millimeter. Like un bebé.”

40

40

Sunshine looks different in this part of the world. A deeper, more sweeping hue of yellow shimmering on the edge of Incan gold.

The air smells different, too. Muskier. Thicker. A tinge of cracked pepper filled with a history of zarapatoca stew, barbequed langostinos and a dash of trade-wind sea salt. In Quito these aromas live in symbiosis with the stench of men, their varied enterprises and the sweat from clenched fists, as do the aromas of any city of over two million people,.

As Remy drove the twists and turns at the outer edges of Quito, I gave brief thought to what life in an Ecuadorian prison might be like.

Maybe the food would be better than in an American one.

Maybe instead of fighting for a spit of idealized land called Mexicantown, I could simply bare-knuckle for cigarettes and rations of whiskey, finally get shivved and be done with it all.

As we reached the old town, navigating past the towering and perpetually unfinished Basílica del Voto Nacional, I wondered if the God of Spain and Rome would forgive me my murderous intentions or banish me to an obscure, smoldering corner of Dante’s Inferno. Or worse, relegate my remains to the mountainous terrain of slave bones tossed and intertwined with the skeletons of long-dead cattle and donkeys.

It didn’t take Remy long to find a weapon for me in the bright and bustling Otavalo Marketplace.

“She wants three hundred American,” Remy said as he discreetly handed me a Beretta Px4 Storm Inox without a magazine. I sniffed it. Broke it down. Ratcheted the slide a couple times.

“Two clips?”

“Five hundred American with two clips,” Remy said. “To be honest, señor, I think you could get her down to—”

“Pay her,” I said, handing Remy the money in a compact roll.

Inconspicuously, he paid a middle-aged Incan-featured woman wearing a colorful skirt and brown fedora who sat placidly watching the crowd of shoppers walk past her handmade skirts, blouses and scarfs.

“Two clips,” Remy said, handing them over the back of the driver’s seat to me.